On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, Carl Beckhorn wrote:
The issue isn't whether we can source those things. The issue is that we _should not_ give individual references for facts like that. Because:
While I certainly can't disagree with you, it's even worse than this. The problems you run into are: -- This isn't a sincere request for sources, it's a filibuster. Providing a source will just lead to further demands like "you need a source for how to write the whole word, not just a source for each kana" or "you'll need a source to show that it's a mistake, rather than the company intentionally changing this in a way that resembles a mistake". (Incidentally, this is also an abuse of AGF.) -- It's ridiculous to say that a source must be given for anything challenged, rather than for anything sincerely challenged. This leads to exactly what's happening here: troublemakers deliberately taking advantage of the rule by using spurious challenges. -- The idea that "if it's so simple, it'll be easy to find a source" just isn't true. It's often easy to find a reference, but many web references aren't suitable as Wikipedia sources. I just Googled up "hiragana table" and found lots of them--but they were personal web pages or even Wikipedia. The first clearly good source I found was this one from Google books, which qualifies because we're much more lenient on accepting published books than web pages as sources: http://books.google.com/books?id=oN23JJhjFpwC&pg=PT65&lpg=PT65&d... This one also explains the small "tsu", so should end this now; of course, it won't.